The present invention relates to winding and, more particularly, to winding plastic tape on cores.
Plastic tape has become commonplace in a number of products including electrical products such as wire, cable, conduit, transformers and other electrical components, as well as in packaging. The use of plastic tape as ties in plastic garbage and storage bags has grown significantly. Manufacturers utilize plastic tape in the form of rolls in automated machinery to produce a wide range of these products.
Rolls of plastic tape are normally wound either on cores to aid in winding and provide improved stability of the roll. They are sometimes wound as a single "pancake" package which comprises a single roll having a width equal to the width of the plastic tape or film. Such a roll has the disadvantage of becoming unstable at large roll outer diameters, especially if the tape is narrow. The single roll package also limits the length of plastic tape, requiring frequent stopping of the machinery for roll changes.
Another winding method for roll packages utilizes a spiral or helical winding method, similar to winding a reel of line or string. This method produces a roll package with a width greater than the tape width and provides additional capacity of the roll package as compared to the "pancake" roll package. This winding method suffers the disadvantage of instability, especially near the roll package ends. Use of spools with end discs improves the stability, but increases the complexity, cost and weight of the package.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,603,817 discloses a tape package comprising a winding method which intermittently and repeatedly halts the transverse direction of the package during winding. The transverse position is maintained for at least one wrap, but fewer wraps than that which would result in a step which interferes with a spiral winding between the positions. While this method provides a greater width and higher capacity roll package as compared to a "pancake" roll package, winding density is reduced due to the spiral wrapped portions. End stability is often unsatisfactory.